Analyses of the 2016 election indicated that one probably effective republican tactic was to suppress voter turnout. Russian and GOP propagandists targeted black communities with content that falsely painted Clinton as a racist. Such negative messaging appeared to lead some black voters to not vote at all, which helped the president win in key states.
An article at The Hightower Lowdown, Six ways the Right is shredding the vote, reviews six current GOP voter suppression tactics. The The Hightower Lowdown is a self-described progressive populist site. The GOP excuse is to reduce widespread vote fraud, which does not exist. The GOP does not see the voter suppression tactics as voter suppression. Mitch McConnell made the GOP’s position clear: “There’s very little tangible evidence of this whole voter-suppression nonsense.”
Purge voter roles: One vote suppression tactic is purging voter roles, especially in predominantly areas. various tactics are used to do this, including removing people from voter roles if they do not vote in several elections or if their registration record doe not exactly match other state records. In Texas, more than 90,000 people were improperly removed from voter rolls. The president praised this as proving rampant voter fraud by immigrants. However, it was shown that the thousands of people with Latinx surnames that had been “exposed” were Texans, and US citizens who were eligible to vote.
Since 2016, about 17 million Americans have been removed from voter roles, which is higher than usual, but THL did not state what usual is.
Litigate & intimidate: The president’s campaign and the GOP have a $20 million fund for vote related lawsuits. Lawsuits have already been filed in Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In Pennsylvania, the GOP has sued all 67 counties to allow GOP-hired, out-of-county “poll watchers.” Presumably, their job will be to intimidate and/or challenge voters. The GOP has also sued California and Nevada to keep them from mailing ballots to all eligible voters.
“These “poll watchers” single out voters they view as “suspicious” and accuse them of trying to vote illegally. They aren’t subtle. Sometimes packing guns, badges, cameras, arm bands, etc. to pose as official ballot police, they literally pull people out of line to loudly demand proof of eligibility. It’s ugly and frighteningly autocratic … and yet legal in many states.
Back in 1982, Republican thuggishness had gotten so out of hand that a federal judge imposed a consent decree to stop some of the crudest intimidation methods. But, with the Trump campaign’s support, that ban was withdrawn in 2018, and this year’s presidential election will be the first in four decades to allow no-holds-barred voter intimidation.Indeed, the national party has been recruiting and training up to 50,000 partisans to confront voters in 15 key states! Adding to the mayhem, True the Vote, a manic fringe group of Trumpeteers, is signing up a freelance militia that includes off- duty police and veterans to enforce “ballot security” in communities of color. The group leader explained the scheme at a February meeting of Republican operatives: “You get some [Navy] Seals in those polls, and they’re going to say ‘No, no. …This is how we’re going to play this show.’”
It’s “a huge, huge, huge, huge deal,” exulted a top Trump campaign lawyer to a Republican group last November. He promised that the party’s 2020 poll patrol programs would be ‘much bigger … much more aggressive [and] much better funded.’
Eliminate polling places: Another voter suppression GOP tactic is to simply eliminate polling places, or to change their location just before an election. THL writes:
“Don’t want Black people to vote? Or tribal members on reservations? Or students on campus? Simple: Eliminate their polling places. Or just slash the budgets for voting machines, poll workers, and early voting in their precincts, creating punishingly long lines and waits. COVID can turn this systemic disenfranchisement lethal.”
Disable the post office: THL writes:
“Vote-by-mail totally discombobulates Donald. Desperate to save himself from letter carriers, he (1) personally killed a bipartisan congressional provision in March that ensured America’s crucial mail service would survive the pandemic, and (2) installed one of his rich funders as postmaster general in May. Louis DeJoy’s first action was to sabotage timely mail delivery by drastically cutting postal workers’ hours and then by removing mail-sorting machines and street-side letter boxes. Thus, America’s globally admired mail system is being wrecked by an unhinged president determined to keep you and me from using it to vote.”
THL goes on to point out that suppressing black voters is a key GOP goal. In 2013, the GOP supreme court lifted a Voting Rights Act requirement with a tangible effect: “.... every state that had been subject to the law raced to pass new voter restrictions, while also closing 1,688 polling places, making it harder for African Americans to vote.” THL blames Chief Justice Roberts for being a political partisan who pretends there is no black voter suppression in America any more.
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